Research methods workshop at UX Australia
I’m very happy indeed to announce that my Research methods for user experience design workshop has been added to the UX Australia program (workshops held Wednesday 26th of August in Canberra).
I’ve revised key aspects of the workshop, leveraging the experiences from some recent projects as examples, and allocated a full day. I’m looking forward to this!
What’s it all about
User experience design, and user-centred design (UCD) in general, requires an understanding of users and their needs and designing with those needs in mind, balanced by factors such as business objectives and technical constraints. Without a solid understanding of these inputs into the process, design is blind.
“Design research” is the process of uncovering and understanding those needs, whether it be direct user research or other means of gathering requirements. Yet, even some experienced web designers, developers and UX practitioners don’t feel well-equipped to take on the research aspects of their projects.
In this one-day workshop, Patrick Kennedy will present the fundamentals of design research from the ‘user experience’ perspective. Specifically, the workshop will be conducted in the context of organising and designing information systems such as websites, intranets and software applications.
This workshop will introduce design research, explain the fundamental principles and teach some simple techniques. The aim is to give the audience a heads-up on the subject and point them in the right direction so they can integrate research into their own work or just better collaborate with design researchers.
Learning objectives
Participants who attend this workshop will:
- learn the concepts underlying design research
- learn a general methodology for approaching research for UX in a realistic situation
- understand the importance of uncovering user needs (and balancing those with business and other objectives)
- be able to demonstrate simple techniques and know when to apply them to the UX process
- have the confidence to start undertaking research
- be able to work more effectively with researchers, including external consultants
- take skills and knowledge back to their workplace and share with their team
- gain a solid foundation on which to build further design research expertise
Workshop details
Participants will learn the concepts behind design research, as well as a set of useful techniques, whilst applying them to a mock project scenario. As such, the basic structure of the workshop will follow a generic methodology, consisting of research, design and validation phases.
Content in the workshop typically covers:
- definition of design research
- principles of UCD
- general UX research methodology
- the ethnographic school of thought
- various flavours of research methods
- making sense of research results
- balancing competing requirements
- explanations of commonly used jargon
- documentation and communication of research results
- moving from research into design
- real-life examples and case studies
This workshop will not be an in-depth, academic discussion of research theory, rather it focuses on practical techniques that practitioners can begin using immediately.
Practical techniques
Workshop participants will be given an overview of a number of research techniques, including:
- interviews
- contextual inquiry and other observation techniques
- focus groups and other group techniques
- card sorting
- surveys and questionnaires
- diary studies and other probes
- competitive review
- literature review
- expert review
- basic web analytics
- affinity diagramming and other methods of analysis
- usability testing and other forms of validation
During the workshop, participants will also be involved in hands-on activities that aim to demonstrate several of these methods and give them an idea of what they would find in a real world situation.
The activities will form part of a mock project that will run the length of the workshop, simulating a realistic, end-to-end research process.
This practical aspect of the workshop will culminate in a ‘micro site-visit’ that takes participants out of the classroom and into the field.
Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to share real design research challenges they have faced in a ‘show and tell’ discussion. Collaboratively the group will work on a solution using all that they have learnt thus far. As many of these challenges as possible will be discussed in the time available.
Target audience
Practitioners who are inexperienced in design research would find this workshop most useful, as opposed to seasoned researchers (be it user research, market research or from scientific fields such as anthropology.)
This workshop is primarily aimed at those who need to design a website or other information system, but whom have no experience in design research, and those who simply have an interest in learning more about UX and UCD.
Hence, no experience in design research or user experience design will be required, but participants should have reasonable experience in using the world wide web as this will form a basis for most examples.
Typical participants include: web designers (creative), web developers (technical), project managers, web team managers, intranet managers, writers, editors and other content creators.
Please note, this is an introductory workshop designed to build core skills, and is not suitable for intermediate or experienced UX or UCD practitioners.
Feedback from past workshops
Participants of past workshops run by the facilitator have said:
“Excellent course and very timely for me. Hands on activities were very, very useful”
“Well structured, well presented, well paced, enjoyable”
“Very useful and informative – best seminar in a long time.”
“Made the subject seem more fun and creative, not so tedious.”
“Great workshop. I had lots of my questions answered in the workshop’s content. Great takeaways also!”
“Interesting, relevant to work being undertaken. Thought provoking.”
“Good balance between theory and practice.”
“Very practical and useful. I expect to use all the topics covered.”
“Great course! Kept interest and useful exercises.”
“Structure was good – balance of theory and practice.”
“Energetic, fun learning.”
“Very helpful & useful ideas to try.”
“Great! Easy to understand concepts & the facilitator was very approachable”
About your facilitator
Patrick Kennedy is a web user experience specialist with over ten years experience in the digital media and web industry. His expertise is in web design, information architecture and web usability, with a focus on user research.
As both a consultant and in-house practitioner, Patrick has delivered successful projects in a variety of different environments, including marketing and advertising, media, IT, manufacturing, not-for-profit and the public sector. He has worked with a variety of organisations, both in Australia and the United Kingdom. During this workshop, Patrick will draw examples from real-world projects to give insight into addressing common challenges and issues.
Prior to working as a user centred design consultant, he worked as a web design technologist for a number of digital agencies and commercial organisations, undertaking front and back-end development, design, information architecture and solutions design roles.
Patrick holds a nationally (Australia) recognised training qualification (TAA40104 Certificate IV in Assessment and Training), and has run workshops on information architecture and design research for the general public as well as for in-house training.
He also speaks regularly at industry conferences, including OZ-CHI 2007, Open Publish 2007, OZ-IA 2007, webDU 2008, OZ-IA 2008, OZ-CHI 2008 as well as smaller seminars and conferences. Patrick has also published many articles on user centred design and related topics.
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[...] design research workshop is still going ahead though, which is great [...]
[...] cover all of the above methods, and more, in my design research workshop which was last run at this year’s UX Australia [...]
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